1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) system. More particularly, the present invention relates to a network connection method and apparatus that is capable of improving network connection performance of the mobile station to a BWA system such as Wireless Broadband (WiBro).
2. Description of the Related Art
A conventional base station provides the function of an access point to mobile stations located in its radio cell coverage area. The base stations are deployed so that their cells are partially overlapped with each other. In the overlapping area, a mobile station may attempt a call connection to a base station. Due to the mobility characteristic, the mobile station associated with a base station may move into a cell of another base station before completing the call connection with the serving base station.
That is, the mobile station that is served by a first base station may moves into a cell of a second base station. In this case, the connection profile of the mobile station for the first base station in Physical and Medium Access Control (MAC) layers is not available to the second base station. Accordingly, the mobile station has to perform a network entry procedure with the second base station for establishing call connection, as was done with the first base station.
As mentioned above, when moving from one cell to another, the mobile station has to make a connection to a handover target base station. At this time, since the serving base station and the new base station have different network profiles, the mobile station establishes the connection to the new base station in consideration of the different network profiles.
An exemplary base station in the WiBro system is a Radio Access Station (RAS) and an exemplary mobile station in the WiBro system is a Personal Subscriber Station (PSS). When a Personal Subscriber Station (PSS) attempts to make a WiBro call connection to a Radio Access Station (RAS) on the move and the cell is changed before the call connection procedure has completed, the PSS has to attempt the call connection with another RAS of the new cell, whereby network connection probability is likely to decrease and average connection processing delay increases, resulting in a degradation of service quality.